The author was raised as an American Indian and describes what it was like to be an Indian boy (the first 7 chapters) and an Indian Girl (the last 7 chapters). This is very different from the slanted way the white man tried to picture them as 'savages' and 'brutes.'Quote: Dear Children:—You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly...

Miss Mayor tells this story with singular skill, more by contrast than by drama, bringing her chief character into relief against her world, as it passes in swift procession. Her tale is in a form becoming common among our best writers; it is compressed into a space about a third as long as the ordinary novel, yet form and manner are so closely suited that all is told and nothing seems slightly done, or worked with too rapid a hand.